


Absinthian

by Wicked_Seraph



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Five Stages of Grief, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Violent Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-05 09:42:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17322602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wicked_Seraph/pseuds/Wicked_Seraph
Summary: The sweetness of affection sours, leaving nothing but a bitter aftertaste.[A series of drabbles written forBanana Fish Angst Week 2019.]





	1. Death

Three words were all it took to strip the world of color, to pluck his eyes from their sockets and drown the world in monochrome. 

Three words were all it took to crush his lungs and transform crisp winter air into a thousand knives lodging themselves in his throat; each breath meant swallowing blood and coughing up shards of glass. 

Three words were all it took to stuff his ears with cotton, to make fish and rice taste like sulfur and ashes. He couldn’t remember the last time he raised a pair of chopsticks voluntarily; his bones had turned to ice, and Sing was left to spoon-feed him weak broth in a vain attempt to thaw them.

Three words were all it took to carve out a bottomless pit in the place where his heart used to beat, used to race when his fingers threaded through hair the color of molten gold. An amorphous vacuum had formed, devouring light and sentimentality until he burned with low, simmering wrath.

Three words were all it took to evaporate the well of affection within him, now coated in algae and filled with once-living things putrescent at its bottom. Bones and maggots, grinning skulls and flies swarming around necrotic tissue. Fungi bloomed; vultures stalked. Eiji longed to embrace vile things, wondering how long it would take until the poison that bubbled in his veins finally consumed him.

Three words were all it took to fix his gaze heavensward; those things that bound him to others had morphed into shackles digging into his flesh, cruel and pitiless as he grasped weakly towards heaven, towards hell — he would gladly let flames lick the flesh from his bones if it meant he could feel warmth once again.

Three words had rendered the world into contemptible dust. Death beckoned towards him, leering and sensual, and Eiji longed to embrace him.

Three words were like feverish breath on his skin, reminiscent of blond hair and green eyes that promised things left unsaid, that promised reunion in shared oblivion.

_Ash is dead._


	2. Ghosts

Sing no longer knew the point at which kindness had mutated into cruelty. 

It had started off simple enough: Eiji had felt a cool gust against his shoulders, startling against the humid summer heat, and immediately his eyes became glassy.

“Th-that was him,” he whispered, lips quivering with an uncertain smile. “I just know it was, it’s too warm outside for it to have been a breeze.”

Sing pretends not to notice the half-opened door of the ice cream parlor they pass.

* * *

For the first time in weeks, Eiji’s face is dry when he wakes up.

Although his complexion is still wan and dark circles still linger near around his eyes, he looks somewhat well-rested.

“Looks like you slept well,” Sing says cheerfully, trying to hide the raw relief in his voice. 

Sleep is good. Sleep means he’s not having nightmares, that he might be dreaming of something el—

“He visited me last night.”

Sing’s spoon pauses mid-stir, clinking against the inside of his coffee mug.

“Did he?”

Eiji’s cheeks become rosier, lips curling into an approximation of a smile.

“He did. I was cold last night, and I felt him pull the covers over me. I just know it was him.”

Eiji's words are a hammer shattering the fragile hope that had begun to crystallize inside Sing's chest; his heart feels too heavy, too dense with mingled anger and disappointment.

“How very thoughtful of him,” Sing says. If Eiji can hear how empty the praise sounds, he doesn’t remark on it. 

* * *

Ash’s ghost wipes the sweat from his brow and the tears from his cheeks during another nightmare, hand disappearing by the time Eiji musters the courage to open his eyes. Sing is there instead, holding a glass of water and wearing an unnaturally kind expression; the corner of his mouth pulls when Eiji tells him about the cool, faint hand he’d felt on his forehead.

“Ash again?” Sing says quietly. Eiji nods, his smile seeming a little stronger, a little more certain.

Sing swallows the painful lump forming in his throat, trying to meet Eiji’s smile halfway.


	3. Photograph

The first thing Shorter noticed was the lack of personal effects. 

Most people taped centerfolds to the wall, always dutifully hidden inside a pillow case during inspection, or wrinkled photos of girlfriends, of families. Photos were sacred; stealing a honey bun might result in a mild scuffle, but stealing a photo of someone’s girlfriend back home was asking to walk away with a broken nose and blood trickling down one’s throat.

Ash, however, had none. At first Shorter figured it was reluctance or shyness, but as the days turned into weeks Ash’s bunk remained devoid of ornamentation, of anything suggesting that Ash had a life or soul outside of the steel bars.

“You know you can put pictures up, right?” Shorter asked.

Ash’s boyish scowl deepened, as though being asked was, in itself, a chore. He didn’t look up from the book in his lap, and for a moment Shorter wondered if he’d even heard.

“So why don’t you?”

“Why do you care?” Ash sneered, closing his book and fixing Shorter with an expression almost cruel in its curiosity. 

“I don’t care either way,” Shorter said defensively, “but you’re the only dude here who doesn’t even have a pin-up. People are gonna start thinking… y’know.”

“Thinking what? Tell me, Shorter,” he said softly, eyes hooded in a way that just barely left room for doubt. “What will they think about me?”

“… nothin’, man. It’s just… weird, not having anything. The only ones who don’t have pictures are—”

“— the real nutcases,” Ash supplied. “The kind of guy who’ll shank or fuck you in your sleep? The kind of guy who doesn’t give a shit if he makes it back home? The kind of guy who has something to hide?”

Ash leaned close to Shorter, close enough for Shorter to see the freckles on his nose and the flecks of gold in his eyes. The smile on his face was dangerous and utterly enticing; in spite of himself, Shorter felt a brief surge of heat between his thighs.

“… forget I said anything,” Shorter muttered, rolling over and pretending not to feel Ash’s eyes boring into his back. 

* * *

 Sing was relegated to sorting through Ash’s personal effects. Eiji could barely stand to look at the penthouse they once shared, eyes watery as though looking directly into the sun; to touch what they once shared would have broken him beyond repair.

Ash and Eiji shared many things, as it turned out; those items with which their apartment hadn’t come furnished had almost certainly been picked out by Eiji: mountains of vegetables in the refrigerator, now soggy and inedible; potted plants limp and wilted in their pot; paintings of foreign vistas and landmarks they could only dream of seeing with their own eyes, now lightly covered in dust and cobwebs. 

Crossing the threshold of the last room on the left, Sing felt his face grow flushed as he saw two beds separated only by a small nightstand, the rest of the room surprisingly bare. Each side of the room had a dresser, but only one had anything notable on it. There was a small TV on the wall opposite of the two beds, but the remote was coated with a thin layer of dust, suggesting that it was more decoration than anything else. 

There were two other bedrooms in their apartment; such proximity to one another could only have been because they both wanted it. Sing’s heart lurched with a fresh wave of grief, eyes blinking back tears.

He immediately knew which side of the room was Eiji’s. One of the dressers was cluttered with photography paraphernalia and pamphlets, with toiletries and dog-eared volumes of manga. Though not messy, it was the kind of clutter that suggested disinterest in pretense. 

The other dresser was bare. There were clothes folded neatly in its drawers, however. Sing couldn't help but smile as he found small bits of contraband tucked underneath his clothes.

He had expected cigarettes or shoplifted whiskey, perhaps an adult magazine buried beneath his socks, but the things Ash chose to hoard were so utterly mundane that Sing wondered why in the world he had to hide them.

A ticket from a ferry. A wrinkled recipe for natto, handwritten in Ash’s careful print. And, beneath everything else, a single photograph nestled within a sleek black photo frame. The angle and lighting were amateur, at best, and Sing knew immediately that this was something Ash had taken impulsively. The thought alone was unnerving — the Ash Lynx he knew, that Shorter had warned him about years ago, never did  _anything_ impulsively, let alone something as boring as taking a picture.

In the photo, Eiji lay against the couch, moments away from drifting off to sleep; Ash had clearly gotten his attention moments before, Eiji gazing up at the camera with a tired but affectionate smile. 

Sing found small streaks in the glass, as if someone had caressed it.


	4. Endless Waltz (Free Day)

The ballroom was quiet save for the rhythmic pattern of footfalls, percussion to an unheard melody.

Sing’s head just barely came up to his mother’s hip when he first learned how to dance. He perched on top of her shoes, small hands nestled within her own as she taught him how to translate cellos and pianos into motion. He found himself enraptured, but filled with a leaden sense of dread that felt at odds with the glittering lights and gilded decor surrounding them. Eventually she withdrew from the dance floor, hidden behind a dark curtain from which she refused to re-emerge.

“Mama!” he cried, arms reaching towards her fruitlessly. A faceless figure grabbed his hands, yanking him back onto the dance floor. 

Sing didn’t have long to mourn the loss of a partner; a stocky youth with a purple mohawk and a wide grin walked up to him, arms outstretched and posture inviting.

“Wanna dance?” he said, holding a hand out and looking more than a little sheepish. Sing felt his face grow warm, though whether it was due to the bright lights or large hand wrapped around his, fingers laced, was impossible to say. Regardless, he closed the gap between them, allowing himself to be lead as Shorter seemed to float through the melody dictated by the orchestra.

The warmth of his body heat cooled incrementally, the loss of heat like pinpricks against his skin, and Sing felt Shorter drift closer to the edge of the dance floor, dangerously close to the curtain where none re-emerged.

“Shorter, please… please stay just a little while longer,” Sing whispered, fingers clenched and white-knuckled. Shorter’s smile was sad, the corner of his lips dragged into something closer to a grimace. The golden light of the chandeliers made his skin look pale and sallow, almost ghastly as his cheekbones stood in stark relief.

“I don’t get to choose,” Shorter said quietly, before a pale white hand wrapped around his arm, pulling him further behind the curtain. Not even the scent of his aftershave remained, and those places where he’d felt Shorter’s heat felt like ice.

Intermittently he saw another pair dancing out of the corner of his eye, twirling and pirouetting with the practiced ease of a couple well-acquainted with one another. They fell into perfect unison; the brunet would descend into a low dip, the blond easily supporting him. They were mesmerizing to watch, a sensual flurry of swishing fabrics and sweat glistening against heated bodies.  They seemed oblivious to anything outside their private sphere; their cheeks were dusted pink as they clung to one another, flush against one another’s hips and chests.

The familiar blond and his partner, side by side with Sing's brother, strode into view, all of them with hands outstretched. Sing wasn’t sure if it was possible to dance in sync with three other people; he found his legs tangled with theirs, alternately falling into Ash’s arms or being hoisted back to his feet by Lao. He eventually found his rhythm, however, learning to fit himself in the spaces they abandoned; Eiji was content to grasp his hand when Ash and Lao seemed lost in the strange hostility that had sparked between them.

He knew the pattern, and tried to memorize Lao’s smile and Ash’s warmth, knowing that they’d be taken from him by the time he allowed himself to relish their company. 

A pale hand stretched past the curtain; this close, Sing could see the veins bulging from beneath its paper-thin flesh. Ash’s expression soured when he saw it; Lao's expression mirrored Ash’s. Ash and Lao broke away from Sing, fingers laced with one another’s as they waltzed towards the curtain; there was something violent and dark in the way they danced, an unspoken struggle to determine who would lead. Eiji stood behind, lips parted in silent agony, hand still curled in the imprint of Ash’s.

Ultimately it was irrelevant; Ash and Lao both disappeared behind the fabric with little more than a flutter to signal their departure.

Sing crumpled to the floor, watching as Eiji looked on from the periphery. His eyes were wide and empty, rooted to the spot where Ash’s shoes had scuffed the floor.

Eiji curled in on himself, hands cupped as though hoping to catch the tears that ran down his cheeks. Sing knelt beside him, shielding him from the countless, nameless couples that waltzed around them. 

Sing’s hand trembled with greed, yearning for mutual destruction; perhaps if they danced in perfect harmony, they could disappear behind the curtain together.


End file.
